City of San Antonio Solid Waste Management Department employees Ross Webb (from left), Billy Hall, and Larry Garza set up recycling and trash bins along Broadway Thursday April 24, 2014.

City of San Antonio Solid Waste Management Department employees Ross Webb (from left), Billy Hall, and Larry Garza set up recycling and trash bins along Broadway Thursday April 24, 2014.

Photo: San Antonio Express-News

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More ways to recycle at Fiesta parades

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SAN ANTONIO — Spectators at the two major Fiesta street parades Friday and Saturday will have more than three times as many bags to use for recyclable garbage so that less is left on the streets and in landfills.

In addition to 20,000 yellow mesh recycling bags provided by the city and volunteers at both the Battle of Flowers parade on Friday and Flambeau parade on Saturday night, city employees and volunteers also will have another 10,000 brown bags for regular garbage. Last year, the city provided 10,000 garbage bags and 6,100 recycling bags.

The Fiesta Verde Committee, which promotes an initiative started in 2009 to make Fiesta more earth-friendly, has reported progress at the Battle of Flowers, with an estimated 35 percent of the event's 24 tons of garbage being recycled last year. But heavy rain and lightning forced last year's Flambeau to shut down early, sending much of the garbage flowing into the stormwater drainage system and into San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River. This year, in addition to brown garbage bins at most intersections on the route and blue bins for aluminum, plastic and other recyclables, parade crowds will again have a convenient way to dispose of trash properly in bags.

City employees and more than 300 volunteers wearing bright green shirts will hand out bags and replace them as needed at the parades, Edmonds said. People can leave the bags by their seats so city workers can put them in the street to be hauled away along with regular garbage, cardboard and others recyclables left by vendors on the 2.6-mile route, she said.

Randy Bear, Fiesta Verde chairman and president of Keep San Antonio Beautiful, said last year's storm during the Flambeau thwarted progress the community has made to lessen Fiesta's environmental impact. He said he's hopeful that San Antonians will dispose of refuse carefully, making this one of the best years for recycling parade garbage. Walmart donated volunteer T-shirts and 10,000 recycling bags as part of a two-year, $30,000 commitment to the Fiesta Verde initiative.